Weekly animals gallery

On the first day of spring, a bumble bee collects pollen from a blooming crocus in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

AP Photo

Two white rhinoceros walk in Limpopo near the new site of a rhinoceros orphanage yet to be built. The center will take in baby rhinoceroses orphaned or injured by poachers. Rhinos will be wiped out from South Africa’s wildlife parks by 2015 if poaching continues at its current rate, a campaigner fighting to save the beasts has warned.

AFP/Getty Images

A white stork (Ciconia ciconia) cleans itself in its nest in Unterneuses, Germany.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Two seized turtles in their cage at the Villa Lorena animal shelter, in Cali, Colombia. The Colombian law prohibits the possession of wild animals as pets and 1,156 wild animals in captivity were seized by police in 2011.

AFP/Getty Images

Cows run into a field in in Delfgauw, The Netherlands, on the first day of spring. After staying in the stables for the winter, they were released out into the field for the first time.

AFP/Getty Images

A Chiricahua leopard frog makes it’s way to an artificial pond in San Bernardino Valley, Ariz. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has set aside more than 10,000 acres as a critical habitat for this threatened frog found in New Mexico and Arizona.

AP Photo

Birds feed in the marsh at Huntington Beach State Park in South Carolina as the sun rises and cuts through the fog.

AP Photo

A large butterfly rests on a tree leaf in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

AP Photo

An employee feeds a 4-week-old Asian camel calf at the Royev Ruchey Zoo in Russia’s Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

REUTERS

Long-tailed Gentoo penguins walk in a new penguinarium at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. A group of Gentoo penguins were transferred from Bulgaria to the Krasnoyarsk zoo last month, the only zoo in Russia holding this kind of penguin.

REUTERS

Thor, left, and Boo, two of three orphaned grizzly bear cubs that came to the Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak, Mich., from Alaska in December wrestle as they explore their new habitat. The three were orphaned in October and captured by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game after their mother was shot and killed by a poacher.

AP Photo

A bee checks a Cherry Blossoms in Branch Brook Park in Newark, NJ.

Dave Kotinsky/Splash News

An Asian Openbill stork searches for food in an agricultural field during sunset in Guwahati city, northeast India. Listed under schedule IV of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972, Asian Openbill storks are commonly found in Assam, India, Sri Lanka and some Southeast Asian countries.

EPA

Two-month-old Charlees, whose name is Hindi for Charlie, makes her public debut at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. The sunshine, combined with her first opportunity to explore the 40-acre Asian Savanna habitat, was a perfect mix for fun. She spent the morning running around meeting the rest of the Park’s seven-member greater one-horned rhino herd. Charlees is the 61st greater one-horned rhino born at the Safari Park since 1975, making the Park the foremost breeding facility in the world for this species. Once widespread in Southeast Asia, the greater one-horned rhinoceros now numbers approximately 2,800 and is listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

AFP/Getty Images

A peacock suns itself amongst the daffodils in The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, UK.

A young polar bear takes a tumble down a slope. The cute cub is on his first adventure out of his enclosure at the Moscow Zoo.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Parrots take off from at a court yard of a house after eating grain at Ambh village, northern Indian city of Jammu.

EPA

Two sandhill cranes takes flight shortly after sunrise at the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary near Gibbon, Neb. Every year, during March and early April, the Platte River from near Grand Island to west of Kearney is home to more than 500,000 sandhill cranes.

AP Photo

An adult Baringo giraffe muzzles her recently born female calf at the Bronx Zoo in New York. Born at the Zoo on March 10, the calf will make her debut at the Zoo’s African Plains exhibit in late March.